Please educate me where there is any controversy here.
The NPS is all about image and numbers. Ma and Pa Peoria don't take the trip of a lifetime to Yellow-mf-Stone to see burned up buffalo.
The Park Service's job is to make everything there look like the reverse of a 1935 nickel.
Would the woodies have mobilized to off the buff if this was photographed, say 75 miles north in Gallatin N.F.?
I guess not. Because the visitor numbers and income and coffee mug sales are a bit lower in GNF.
Recall the old federal "Let it burn" policy pre-1990. All it took was the west entry of Jellystone to get scorched and that doctrine got adjusted right quick - never mind the actual biological advantages of occasionally letting ma' nature do her thing. The National Parks aren't about nature. They're about prettiness. My comment was merely a reflection on the inconsistency in the management practices between agencies and departments within the fed.gov. Nothing more.
I hate to see animals suffer. Regardless of what caused it. Nature can be cruel. I've had dogs put down. I've killed injured animals. In the case of the BBQ Buffalo the process of natural selection was circumvented.
No one here was in on the post-mortem, but all I see is some raw skin on the buff. Would it have survived? We will never know.
It hauled itself out of boiling sulfur-water.
It got away from a grizzly bear
Allow me to butcher Nietzsche while honoring Darwin - "That what did not kill it didn't get a chance to make it stronger"
